An Irving Boy Comments on the Immigration Scandal

If you think the Irving Public Library should stop stocking Spanish-language material: shut the fuck up and learn some history. Both languages are traditional here, whether some folks like it or not. Oh, and whether you like to acknowledge it, racist bullshit has a long history in this state: our family still recalls how we were suddenly regarded as Type-IV demons simply for the crime of selling our house to a Mexican lady, thus letting “them” into that nice clean Dallas neighborhood. Anybody who tries to deny that this crap happened is doing nothing but discrediting herself the minute she opens her mouth.

If you think that the Irving Police are a bunch of top-to-bottom racists who just can’t wait to screw over somebody who happens to be brown…. you’re close, but not quite there. That’s Dallas. Close, but very definitely not the same, and at least a few of those bad apples are in jail now. Chill. Oh, and a hot tip: if you’re going to be here illegally, try learning the language and blending in a little bit, as opposed to sticking out like a sore thumb because you refuse to so much as talk to anybody who’s not Mexican (even if they’re from the big Ecuadorian community we’ve got around Irving Blvd. — I know it hasn’t occurred to your dumb ass, but your racism stinks just as badly as anybody else’s.)

But let’s sit here for a moment and actually think, rather than merely react. Irving has something like a couple hundred thousand people in it. And of the criminal and criminal-suspect population of Irving, something like 300 people per month are being referred on immigration issues. Let’s do some math:

300/200,00=0.15% of Irving’s population is getting referred for deportation on a monthly basis. This in a city that’s known to be at least 25% immigrant/foreign-born (a.k.a., why we have so many cool Mom’n’Pop restaurants from all over the place around here). And that’s both older figures and the numbers actually being counted. Considering that some folks are now saying that the number of illegal aliens in the U.S. may number 34 million, this means that there may be more illegal aliens in this country (not all of whom, but most, are Latino), than there are total African-Americans… recall, this is illegals, a.k.a., not counting U.S. citizens and legal residents from Mexico and Latin America.

What do those numbers tell us? For starters, it tells us that 300 people per month is a drop in the bucket, and that if the local Latino population has specific allegations of unfair treatment, they should be brought forward (and of course it’s always possible). At the same time, letting a bunch of power-brokers on an international level try to turn Irving into some kind of new immigration battleground is just stupid.

Ya know what? Immigrating illegally is a crime, true: but it’s also a pretty darned minor crime. If Irving wants to keep an eye out for those parts of the population that are muggers, thieves, rapists, drunk drivers, what have you, and actually check on who they are… how’s that affect somebody who’s actually just going about their lives, except insofar as it lets folks who are playing a game know that the game’s being played? So let’s all calm down, and not let the Professionally Aggrieved get our blood pressure up. So, let the immigrants (like my family) speak English where English is spoken, and locals like me will be plenty understanding, and pick up a few words in the process so everybody can have a lower-blood-pressure, stress-free day.